Day 2 — Education Mission, Education Fair in Jakarta

Amanda Lawrence is an intern working with the U.S. Commercial Service to support the Education Mission to Indonesia and Vietnam.

Under Secretary for International Trade Francisco Sanchez rings the gong to open the Education Fair hosted by The Putera Sampoerna Foundation. (Commerce Dept. Photo)

We spent all day at the Education Fair at Sampoerna Strategic Square in Jakarta. Each school exhibited at the fair and met students and their parents. There were 56 exhibitors and approximately 6,000 students and more than 10,000 attendees including parents attending the fair.

Many of the representatives from the schools participating in the mission have many things to say about the experience, such as “I’ve never seen an education fair so well-organized,” said Murat Tas of University of Incarnate Word. “This is really the best!” and “I was very impressed with the students — they were very articulate and asked all the right questions,” said Jayati Ghosh of Dominican University of California.

Attendance was larger than expected and Marcos Fragoso of the University of Incarnate Word said “Attendance at the fair was really really good, and the quality of the student was excellent.”

And James Reidel of University of Pennsylvania said “This mission is an excellent use of our taxpayer dollars and I’m so pleased to be part of it!”

Indonesia can keep its small proportion of extremists under control, and the balance of the nation is poised to increase the standard of living for its people tremendously. Already they are the #4 population in the world after China India and USA. And they have a lot of oil and hardworking people. Please stay secular gov’t Indonesia!

The education of children is a very complicated subject (the
language, cultural level, etc.). not all families tolerate
this, the opinion of the partner is also very important,
Most families are destroyed when the other
members do not accompany the worker

I think the basis for many countries out of poverty, going to promote education of children. If we promote training in less developed countries in the not too distant future, these countries will have more resources to survive.